English

Writing in a funny way about funny personalities is not an especially fun endeavour. The written fun is supposed to build upon, and should go beyond, the fun of the funny artist. Fojž is a funny artist. And sometimes he also screws around with you. It’s then that he is at his best. He works for fun, and for that fun art lovers, publishers, gallery owners, principals and their ilk even pay him something. And this circumstance, too, is in its own way funny. I have fun writing about serious things, and vice versa. For this reason I decided to write a serious text about the funny drawing work of Alojz Zorman Fojž.
Alojz Zorman, commonly known as Fojž, is the artist “hid behind”, if I may recall Prešeren and his poem about the “zad skrit” Apel. As you may know, Apel, hidden behind his painting, eavesdropped on the professional and not-so professional critics. With Fojž it’s slightly different. Somewhat humbly and imperceptibly, Fojž perceives the world around him. He seems harmless to his surroundings. But watch out! When a drawing is done, when all the lines have been drawn, Fojž’s art is like a broom, indulgently but steadily sweeping before it human stupidity and weaknesses. There are plenty of examples. One that I remember especially well, is Fojž’s dramatic presentation of the official crest of our former homeland, the Federal Democratic Socialist Self-managing Non-aligned Independent Republic of Yugoslavia, where the torches in their flaming passion set the whole crest on fire. The end is known. Or that cartoon where the zealous builders diligently build from bricks and cement a gigantic sickle and gigantic hammer. Then both attributes of communism and the victorious proletariat succumb to the forces of the elements and collapse. To paraphrase slightly the idea from the Bible: Dust to dust, via the thin bridge of illusion.

Fojž often understands words literally. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is the title of a drawing (Vsake oči imajo svojega malarja) in which a bearded painter draws two big eyes. A person without a head runs around in a headless fashion. The disposable stove is made of wood. The dieting spoon has a great big hole in the middle. In his drawings Fojž is something of a moralist, a fighter for peace, and a critic of social inequality. He is also fond of “instructing”. There are too many different Fojž drawings to count, and they have been published in a range of connections by various Slovenian newspapers and media.
Fojž is not stubborn, like many of my compatriots. In this respect he is not a typical Slovenian. Fojž has a gentle nature. He would retreat, possibly even run away, from some attacker that did not like his art. Yet not because he would be scared, absolutely not, but because that would seem to him the simplest solution. Fojž is not a person of conflict.
Fojž has already drawn a great many lines and designs. And there are plenty to come. Nevertheless, I could say that Fojž is a sparing artist. His products are often lapidary and are composed for their symbolic value. The cause of this is perhaps his Gorenjska background. Fojž is from Radovljica.
Fojž tells stories by drawing. He tends to talk little, and he prefers to be silent. But I do think that he likes to tune in to the world and his surroundings very closely. Many of my compatriots are wont to just talk away, even though they have nothing to say.
Alojz Zorman aka Fojž is the author and co-author of countless diverting objects, his “artiklni”. The majority of these artiklni were created in the basement of the house at Pribinova 2 in Ljubljana some – well now, where has that time gone – some fifteen years ago at least. Original contributions were made to this work by Andrej Nebec (son of the Nebec of GPG) and Andrej Suhadolc (n.b. nephew of the writer of this text). Among the most fascinating of these objects is the series “In case of emergency break glass” (V sili razbij steklo). Contained in boxes or fused glass tubes are a plum, a cigarette and lighter, tampon, condom and so forth. You can even buy “earth” in a sealed glass test tube. Some artiklni play wickedly on sexual predicaments, giving us for example binglnovo olje (a type of oil), a condom woven from wool, an erectometer measuring device, and lipstick in “organic” form. Then there are the so-called objects of general use: a Rubik cube made of granite, a wrist hourglass, black light bulb, double screwdriver, artificial intelligence, fuk cunca (a wiping cloth used after sexual intercourse), a potty for little male and female poopers, a walking stick with a bell for overtaking, double-sided drawing pins with points on either side, coloured toothpicks are “Ribnica jackstraws”, “monkey swing”, and river Sava stones in brandy. And again there is no end to his sense of fun. His bakery artiklni are famous for this. In shaping his dough, Fojž and his collaborators delve into the passionate world of mainly erotic sculpture. And Fojž’s “edible” sculpture belongs to the world of humour and satire. After all these years the artiklni have come alive again. They are offered again for view and sale. Admirers of Fojž’s art can enjoy them in the spiritual and partly also in the literal sense.
I think that recently Fojž has been occupied most with “practical jokes”. These are shallow boxes in which he places scenes from everyday life cut from pieces of painted plywood. You could say that these are little theatrical scenes: a stout lady singing, lovers taking a Venetian gondola ride, a pretty girl sunbathing, a fisherman fishing in a boat, a hunter watching for game, an athlete lifting weights and so on. By activating the trick device under the box, the scene alters and shifts in various ways; pastoral scenes change into their radical opposites and situational paradoxes: the singer’s dress slides from her bosom, the lovers fall to the bottom of the gondola in a hot embrace, the pretty girl hides her treasures from the gaze of a lecher in the bushes, the fisherman hooks a shark, the hunter is pursued by a huge lion, and the athlete doesn’t lift the weight, but rather his pants fall down, along with his “assets”. With one tug the famous pop trio Sestre (Sisters) become brothers. And so on. For those who might doubt the virtuosity of Fojž’s ideas and drawings, I would suggest that they try to think up some possible practical joke for themselves! They will soon learn that this is no simple thing, least of all to paint it!
Fojž’s opus also extends to somewhat smaller “practical jokes” with slightly less drastic content. The boxes are wooden and the moving parts are ceramic. These joke boxes are more for children and they enjoy the input of conceptual and practical work from Vanja Bajt.
Fojž has a gentle nature. His art is never insulting or even, heaven forbid, banal. I think that his art is sometimes melancholic. And this comes from the Slav roots. We Slavs are happy if we can be melancholy. In Poland, where he studied, this aspect of his art acquired special emphasis.
Fojž is an artist that anyone can understand. Alongside his works there is no need for any special explanation on the lines of “What the artist wanted to say with this”. Fojž is indulgently critical of the world. He does not call down fire and brimstone upon it, for he knows that he cannot and will not change it. He works in order to avoid anyone ever saying to him “Why didn’t you say so before?”
The book Kvantaški stihi by Milan Dekleva has been illustrated with drawings by Alojz Zorman Fojž. The following can be read in this book:
Wallowing in wine to our bellies,/ claiming the madness of the world,/ each one fingering their blade,/ their pocket god.
We philosophise, bruised by ecstasy,/ raised above the empty world./ We would spawn in every cut /and every cellar.
Fojž’s accompanying drawing of a woman’s body is modelled on Carpaccio’s pespectives of such artiklni. Only a closer inspection reveals the essence of the drawing: the central motif is the wound, the crevice, the slit, hole, abyss and –
end.
And one more thing:
On the wall of the office in the building where I am associated in labour, I have one of Fojž’s “practical jokes”. Behind a table, with glass in hand, a man with a hat has succumbed and doubled up in sleep. If I pull on the string on the bottom of the box, the man wakes up, half stands up, hides the glass in his hand, the table shakes, and the wine bottle topples over in front of the protagonist, who has obviously been caught in a bar by his spouse, at least that’s how it appears to me. Above the scene is painted a large letter S in the famous style of the Superman S. And of course this is the Slovenian Superman. I am very fond of Fojž’s Superman. Sometimes, but not very often, I read the big S metaphorically as my name and the name of the writer of this text:
Suhadolc
November 2004